Not your Nana’s Peggy’s Cove

From Stan Rogers to shipwrecks, this tour includes much more than the iconic lighthouse

Great E.A.R.T.H. Expeditions guide Ryan Barry holds out some berries we picked along the trail in the coastal barrens, just east of Peggy´s Cove.

Photograph by: Gavin Young
, Calgary Herald

Just down the shore from where we’re watching the waves roll in, the sun is bouncing off the rows and rows of cars parked at Peggy’s Cove, the little Nova Scotian fishing village that attracts 750,000 tourists every year. We’re on our way to join the hordes, but first we’re taking a detour to hike through the rocky coastline a couple of kilometres east of one of Canada’s most popular destinations.

There are no crowds here. Just the five of us — two Canadians, a lad from Liverpool, a hockey fan from Pittsburgh and Ryan Barry, a guy who grew up exploring Nova Scotia’s outdoors and has turned his love of adventuring into a tour company, Great E.A.R.T.H. Expeditions. As the iconic lighthouse fades in and out of view with the scraps of fog, we walk around bogs and over boulders listening to Barry talk about the coastal barrens.

He explains that the boulders littering the landscape were left behind by glaciers and he points out the dog lichen that’s slowly creeping up the rocks (and is destined to become top soil in another 500 years or so). We stoop down to learn about two different types of insect-eating plants, pause to see blueberries, cranberries and juniper berries, and even a little green snake.

At the water’s edge, Barry points out a sculpture made of scrap metal retrieved from the water that commemorates those who have died in the roughly 3,600 shipwrecks off the coast. Some shipwrecks are famous, like the Titanic. Others aren’t quite as well known, like Ken Pitt-Jones. He was an Australian marine engineer who had been sailing from Scotland in a 36-foot converted fishing boat in 1962 when a hurricane named Daisy hit. He made it ashore and decided to put down roots.

Barry knows the story well because Pitt-Jones was his grandfather and he had just died a few days before, at 91. The obituary in that day’s paper — complete with a black and white photo of a handsome young man in a captain’s cap — says his family would “especially miss his sense of humour and his story telling,” attributes that the sailor clearly passed on to his grandson.

Earlier that morning, Barry had picked each of us up at our hotels for the “Peggy’s Cove Rock Walk” which might also be called “Peggy’s Cove Plus with your Favourite Smart Aleck Nephew.” Before we hit the highway, we stop at the Halifax Citadel where other tourists crowd in to hear Barry reel off the basics about Halifax, including the fact that it has more pubs and bars per capita than anywhere else in North America.

Next, we stop at the beautiful Halifax Public Gardens, where along with smelling the roses we’re instructed to use the facilities before heading out of town. Once on the road, Barry gives a little tutorial on singer songwriter Stan Rogers and turns it up so the Canadians in the van can start singing: “We’ll make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again . . .”

After stomping around the coastal barrens for about an hour (which, after the fox poop revelation includes at least 12 more one-liners about purple rocks), we load back in the van for the quick drive to Peggy’s Cove. We head to a quiet deck surrounded by lobster pots, and Barry unpacks a lunch of smoked salmon and other treats — unsuccessfully stopping a seagull from making off with a piece of meat — and we sit down to lunch.

Perhaps inevitably at a famous Canadian landmark, the conversation turns to hockey. To the delight of the man from Pittsburgh, Barry tells us that Sidney Crosby grew up “five streets from me.” As we try to remember whether Gretzky ever played in New York, a Rangers fan walking past assures us that he did.

After finishing up the best strawberries I’ve ever eaten (straight from the Annapolis Valley) and packing up our dishes (reusable, not disposable), we join the throng of tourists — grandmothers to little kids and even a few Harley-riding, black-chap wearing bikers — who are walking up the windy road past locals selling little lobster pots, rock art and $75 paintings. Once we get to the lighthouse, where hundreds of people from all over the world are inadvertently photo bombing each other’s pictures, we look a little wistfully back at the coastal barrens that we had just had all to ourselves.

We take our own requisite pictures near the lighthouse before heading back down to the van, past a group of tourists listening to a guide who is decked out with a kilt, and holding a lobster. “He’s trying too hard,” Barry says with a grin.

Settled back in the van for the 45 minute drive back to Halifax, Stan Rogers singing again, Barry starts talking about other music out of Nova Scotia. Turns out the Canadian rock legends in Sloan “grew up ten streets from me.” After asking who didn’t grow up in Barry’s ’hood, we hear about his adventures in Banff, Newfoundland, Iceland and all over his beloved Nova Scotia.

Enriched by the day of scenery and stories, we arrive back at our hotels. It was definitely not your typical tour of Peggy’s Cove and maybe not the one your grandmother would expect. But provided your Nana can handle an easy two-kilometre hike, doesn’t mind a little irreverence with her tour guide and is keen on Stan Rogers, bring her along. She’ll love it.

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